Cavaliers' New Hire David Blatt Has a European Basketball Pedigree That Can Benefit James

David Blatt was barely known, even in the basketball world, until last month. Now, after a long series of interconnected events that no one saw coming, Blatt looks like the luckiest man on the face of the basketball earth.

Blatt spent decades in the sport's European hinterlands, scoring a reputation as the best coach on that side of the Atlantic Ocean, yet NBA teams kept passing on him to hire the same usual candidates. Finally, in...